This
episode explains how politicians on the left, in both Britain and
America, turned to the techniques developed by business to read and
fulfil the inner desires of the self.
Both
New Labour, under Tony Blair, and the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton,
used the focus group, which had been invented by psychoanalysts, in
order to regain power. They set out to mould their policies to people's
inner desires and feelings, just as capitalism had learnt to do with
products.
Out
of this grew a new culture of public relations and marketing in
politics, business and journalism. One of its stars in Britain was
Matthew Freud who followed in the footsteps of his relation, Edward
Bernays, the inventor of public relations in the 1920s.
The
politicians believed they were creating a new and better form of
democracy, one that truly responded to the inner feelings of
individual. But what they didn't realise was that the aim of those who
had originally created these techniques had not been to liberate the
people but to develop a new way of controlling them.